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Berkeley project site has long historical record of Native American discoveries

Hundreds of Native American skeletons have been found since the late 19th Century in and around the remnants of a vast shellmound in West Berkeley, near where a developer wants to build a residential-and-retail complex.

BERKELEY — Hundreds of Native American skeletons have been found over the last century-and-a-half in and around the remnants of a vast shellmound in West Berkeley, historical records show. Today, on part of the city-landmarked West Berkeley Shellmound site, a developer wants to build a residential-and-retail complex with 155 apartments, about 30,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, and a six-level parking garage.

The developer team has said that rigorous testing has yielded no evidence that cultural resources exist at the site, 1900 Fourth Street, which currently serves as a parking lot for Spenger’s Fish Grotto restaurant. But opponents of the project say such an assumption is illogical, given the abundance of human remains found in the immediate vicinity, most recently those of five individuals during trenching work for another project across the street, at 1919 Fourth St. They argue that the shellmound area should be respected as a sacred burial site.

“There are burials basically ringing the perimeter of the parking lot,” said Berkeley author and historian Richard Schwartz.

In more than two decades of research, Schwartz has compiled news accounts and scholarly reports documenting findings of more than 400 sets of human remains associated with the West Berkeley Shellmound. The reported findings go all the way back to the 1870s, when Alphonse Pinart, a French explorer, linguist and ethnologist, examined a shellmound on Strawberry Creek.

“On making an excavation he found three hundred skeletons, and quite a variety of stone implements,” the Oakland Evening Tribune reported in an Aug. 8, 1876 article headlined “About Shellmounds.”

“(Pinart) is satisfied that (shellmounds on this coast) were all places of sepulchre for Indians, and that they gradually reached their present size by frequent burials,” the article continues.

The precise location of Pinart’s excavation is not documented. An 1874 map of the creek’s natural flow shows it veering slightly south in its westward flow to cross University Avenue just east of Fourth Street. A map from later that year shows the creek, by then channelized, flowing across the site of today’s Spenger’s parking lot.

Schwartz said he chanced upon the Tribune article while doing research for a book on a different topic. His curiosity piqued, he went to UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where he found Pinart’s field notes. Inquiries to museums in France and Southern California yielded more documents, Schwartz said.

He submitted the whole package to the Northwest Information Center of the California Historical Resources Information System at Sonoma State University, where it now is part of the official record of the state archaeological site CA-ALA-307.

By the late 1950s, the West Berkeley Shellmound — at least the portion above ground level — was largely gone, Schwartz said, parts of it used as road-paving material and other industrial uses, and portions removed by relic-hunters from all over the world as a trove of bones, shell ornaments, beads, arrowheads, spear points, fishing utensils, charmstones, ceremonial items and other artifacts.

Besides the Pinart finds, Schwartz said he has provided historical data to the state on more than 100 burials found during construction projects or research by students going back as far as the late 19th century.

Additionally, he found a 1954 Oakland Tribune article describing a UC Berkeley professor’s find of a village site dating back as far as 2,700 years, with artifacts buried 13 feet deep, during construction of the University Avenue overpass. Additionally, UC Berkeley archaeologists reported finding remains in the 1950s of more than 90 individuals in the last small above-ground remnant of the mound shortly before it was leveled.

Pinart’s notes, and Schwartz’ submission of them to the ALA-307 record, are referenced in footnotes to an archaeological assessment report by Basin Research Associates on another development project, at 2001 Fourth St., catty-corner to the Spenger’s parking lot. But the Pinart notes are not directly referenced in the draft Environmental Impact report, by LSA Associates Inc., for 1900 Fourth St. Berkeley Principal Planner Shannon Allen noted that LSA reviewed the site record of ALA-307, which includes Pinart’s notes.

Mark Rhoades of Rhoades Planning Group, and Archeo-Tec Consulting Archaeologists, both members of the developer team, and Andrew Galvan, a Chochenyo Ohlone who has been a tribal consultant to the city as well as a consultant to the developer team, did not immediately respond to requests for comment this week.